14. Paintings are imitated with surprising elegance, by cementing together colored pieces of glass and marble, as well as those of wood. Representations by these means, are called Mosaics, or Mosaic paintings. The cause of their having received this appellation cannot be ascertained. Some, without much reason, attribute the origin and name of this branch of the art to Moses. Others suppose that works of this kind have been thus denominated, because they were first employed in grottoes dedicated to the Muses.
15. Drawings and paintings are divided into classes, according to the nature of the objects represented, the principal of which are historical, architectural, landscape, marine, portrait, still life, grotesque, botanical, and animal. The subordinate divisions of these branches are very numerous.
16. The propensity to imitation, so deeply rooted in the human mind, is the foundation of the arts of design; and there can scarcely be indicated a lengthened period in the history of man, in which it was entirely inactive. It may have first been accidentally exhibited in tracing the form of some object in the sand; or resemblances in sticks and stones, may have originally suggested the idea of imitations by means of lines and colors.
17. Although painting and sculpture may be supposed to have existed, at least in a rude state, at a very early period, and even before the deluge, yet the reign of Semiramis, queen of Assyria, 2000 years before Christ, is the earliest to which authentic history extends. Diodorus Siculus relates that the queen, having thrown a bridge across the Euphrates, at Babylon, erected a castle at each end of it, and inclosed them with walls of considerable height, with towers upon them. The bricks of which they were constructed, were painted before they underwent the fire, and were so put together, that single figures, and even groups of them, were represented in colors.
18. This author supposes also, that the arts had attained nearly an equal degree of cultivation about the same time in Egypt, sculpture, as best serving idolatrous purposes, being in both countries much in advance of the sister art of painting. But, in neither country, was painting or sculpture brought to a great degree of perfection.
19. In Egypt, independent selection of objects, and variety of exhibition, never appear to have been much regarded. When a specific form of character had been once adopted, so it remained, and was repeated unchanged for ages. Little action, and no expression, was given to figures. The chief employment of the Egyptian artists, seems to have been the painting of the chests of mummies, and the ornaments on barges and earthenware.
20. Painting, in the early days of its existence, was employed chiefly in the exhibition and preservation of historical facts; and, wherever it remained faithful to these objects, it was obliged to sacrifice the beautiful to the significant. Only in those countries where alphabetical writing existed, could painting elevate itself to a fine art.
21. The Pelasgi, who expelled or subdued the earlier inhabitants of Greece, and colonized that country, probably brought with them the rudiments of this art; and it at length grew up with its sister arts. In some of the stages of its progress, this intelligent people, no doubt, received useful hints from other countries, and especially from Egypt; yet they finally surpassed all the nations of antiquity in this branch of art.
22. The Greeks, with singular care, have preserved the names of their artists from the earliest periods of their practice. Ardens, of Corinth, Telephanes and Crato, of Sycion, and some others, are noticed as such, when painting had advanced no farther than the mere circumscription of shadows by single lines.
23. The different kinds of painting, as marked by the successive stages of the art among the Greeks, are as follows; 1. The skiagram, or drawing in simple outlines, as in the circumscriptions of shadows. 2. The monogram, including both the outlines and others within them. 3. The monochrom, or picture in a single color. 4. The polychrom, or picture of many colors.